Google Has Unveiled Big Accessibility Improvements for Docs, Sites and Calendar

Google has announced a number of accessibility improvements for Google Docs and Sites as well as for Google Calendar. These improvements include support for several screen readers as well as more comprehensive keyboard shortcut support. Overall, the improvements should make the products easier to see for the visually impaired.

"Blind students (like blind people of all ages) face a unique set of challenges on the web. Members of the blind community rely on screen readers to tell them verbally what appears on the screen,"  T.V. Raman, Technical Lead for Google Accessibility, wrote.

"They also use keyboard shortcuts to do things that would otherwise be accomplished with a mouse, such as opening a file or highlighting text," he continued.

"Over the past few months, we’ve worked closely with advocacy organizations for the blind to improve our products with more accessibility enhancements," he said.

"While our work isn’t done, we’ve now significantly improved keyboard shortcuts and support for screen readers in several Google applications, including Google Docs, Google Sites and Google Calendar," he announced.

The updates focus on two main areas. The first is improved support for screen readers. Google Docs and Sites now support  JAWS, VoiceOver and Google's own ChromeVox. Google Calendar has introduced support for JAWS and ChromeVox.

When editing documents or spreadsheets, users will hear feedback when making edits, inserting new elements, or moving from one cell to another.

Second, all of the products boast better keyboard shortcut support. This ensures that blind users can navigate the site and use all, or most of the features, without the need of a mouse.

With Google Calendar, you can use the keyboard to move through your different calendars, but also browse through events. You can also create or edit events with the keyboard.

The same goes for Docs, you can browse your documents list with the up and down arrow keys and open one by pressing Enter. Google plans to expand the accessibility options of more of its products.